And Those Who Come After
by Petronius
Summary: After Willow's restoration, Buffy helps Giles understand his role in her life.


**" . . . and those who come after . . ."**  
by G. Petronius  
Spoilers: Season Six  
Rating: PG for a little swearing  
Disclaimer:  
All the characters of BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, Fox and Mutant Enemy and not me. I only borrow them, mess with their heads, make them cry and, once in a while, torture them.

Teaser: After Willow's restoration, Buffy helps Giles understand his place in her life.

"Hey, guys!" Buffy announced as she bounced into the Magic Shop. Deftly she avoided one of the many piles of debris that were mounded up in various locations across the floor. Although there were still cracks in the walls, the fragments of the collapsed ceiling no longer covered the display areas in a blanket of rubble as they had just three weeks earlier. 

"Hi Buffy," Willow sang out from behind the counter where she was sweeping up broken glass.

"Where's Anya?" Buffy asked as she looked around.

"Over here," Anya muttered from a corner of the shop still clogged with a particularly large pile of wreckage. She was busily sorting though the fragments of the ceiling for any salvageable inventory. 

"Wow, you guys have made progress!" said Buffy, honestly impressed by the fact that she could now walk through the shop on little cleared paths amongst the debris.

"It helps that the building department didn't condemn the place after all," Willow said sarcastically as she pushed her broom.

"Well, you might as well make yourself useful," Anya ordered as she popped up out of the pile she was rooting through. "Grab a shovel. Dumpster's out back!"

Buffy scowled.

"Where's Giles?" she asked as she scanned the remains of the shop for her Watcher. "I thought he was down here helping you guys."

"He was," Willow answered, "I saw him sorting out the invoices and other records by the register when he suddenly got all wiggy and took off."

"Yelled something about, 'I forgot! I almost forgot!' and poof! he was gone." Anya announced with disgust. "He does that a lot."

"What?" Not really paying attention to Anya's observation, Buffy wandered over to the counter where the cash register sat. 

"Say crazy things at the most inappropriate times."

"Oh," Buffy answered. She stared at the piles of scorched papers scattered across the counter. A small hand held device lying nearby caught her attention.

"Hey Will, what's this?" Buffy picked up the rectangular shaped object that fit comfortably in the palm of her hand.

"Oh, I just got that," Willow called out as she put her broom down. Looking for any excuse to take a break from the filthy work, Willow joined Buffy. "It's real cool. It's a digital voice recorder. No tapes or anything. Runs for five hours. I can use it to record lectures at college."

"Neat," Buffy replied with some interest. She didn't always appreciate her best friend's fascination for gadgetry. "So, no idea where Giles went?"

"No clue," Willow said shaking her head. "He had one of his "Giles Moments" and just flew out the door."

Buffy began absent mindedly fussing with the piles of heat damaged papers Giles had stacked up. Suddenly one document caught her attention. It was a calendar with the current day's date circled. Two words in Giles' unmistakable handwriting were written beneath the date and underscored several times.

"JC Remember," it said.

"What does that mean?" Willow asked, pointing at the date.

Buffy didn't answer. She suddenly felt a pang pull at her heart. Willow saw the expression on Buffy's face and she, too, realized what Buffy was thinking.

"Oh, my God," she said quietly, "That was today?"

"Yeah," Buffy replied nodding. "Five years ago."

"Poor Giles." Willow's eyes glistened.

"I have to go find him," Buffy said firmly.

"But we don't know where he's gone?"

"I do." 

Buffy strode quickly from behind the counter and out of the Magic Shop.

* * * * *  
As the sun slid towards the horizon, shadows spread down the street that ran through Sunnydale's dilapidated industrial zone. Several blocks of abandoned warehouses stretched as far as the eye could see. Buffy hesitated in front of one building in particular. Every window in the structure was broken, the outer walls scorched and an eight foot high chain link fence surmounted by barbed wire blocked off all access.

This was the one. There was no question in her mind. Even after all these years and despite the shattered roof rafters that pointed into the sky like blackened bony fingers, the image of the place was burned into her memory. The night she had dragged her badly beaten Watcher out of the flaming structure after he had tried to kill Angelus. The night Giles came with only revenge in his thoughts, revenge for Jenny's brutal murder.

Buffy shook her head as she walked past Giles' red BMW parked by the building's chained up entrance.

"Don't be too ObviousMan," she muttered to herself and shrugged her shoulders as she quickly glanced around at the surrounding decaying buildings. "Well, we all know what BMW stands for, 'Break My Window.'"

Quickly Buffy slipped through a gaping space in the fence just a few yards from where Giles was parked. 

The door to the old warehouse swung loose on its hinges. The smell of burned wood, wet down by rain and years of rot, hung heavily all around Buffy as she stepped inside. Just a few yards in, Giles stood by a fallen timber. His back was to her. She knew he sensed her presence but wouldn't turn around.

"Giles," Buffy called out softly.

Giles remained immobile and didn't answer. Buffy stepped up close by his side.

"Giles, what are you doing here?"

"I always come," was his emotionless answer.

"Why?" Buffy asked as gently as she could. "This isn't right."

"If I didn't come," Giles said softly, "who would remember? Her life, what she did, after it was all forgotten, would it be like she had ever existed at all?"

Buffy raised her eyebrows only slightly since she had come to expect this sort of unintelligible logic from her Watcher.

"Huh?" she asked as she had so many times before in their six year relationship.

"You know," Giles said as if he were talking to himself, "the old philosophical question. If an event occurs without the intermediary of human perception, does that event have existence? Did it actually take place?

Buffy scowled and scratched her head. Something about Giles' babbling was familiar. Suddenly it came to her.

"Oh yeah!" she exclaimed. "I remember . . . from Willow's dumb philosophy course!" Buffy began to recite from memory.

"If a bear crapped in the woods . . ."

"I believe the analogy goes, 'If a tree fell in the forest,'" Giles gently corrected her.

"And no one was there to see it," Buffy continued enthusiastically without a pause, "did it actually happen!" Buffy beamed, proud that she had retained at least some convoluted scraps of knowledge from her curtailed college career.

Giles finally turned towards her and recognized the look on her face. He nodded in acknowledgement.

"Yes," he said with a faint grin, "something to that effect."

"And you know the answer is 'yes!', Giles," Buffy went on, her grin spreading as she imagined she had her Watcher's approval. Giles smiled and nodded his head realizing how important it was to her and drinking in her natural irrepressible optimism.

"And how is that?" he asked, curious as to what impact a dose of Philosophy 101 had had on her reasoning processes.

"Well obviously! The bear felt better, and nobody else in the forest wanted to go near that spot since . . ."

"Buffy . . ."

"Yeah?"

Giles brushed Buffy's long strands of hair off her face with his hand. For just a moment, he felt all the aching intensity he kept so well concealed, suddenly lift making his limbs feel light. He also imagined the stiffness in his joints, something he couldn't shake since the ceiling of the Magic Shop fell on him, suddenly melt away. 

It was her smile. He couldn't remember when he last saw Buffy, his Slayer whom he always feared was doomed to a brief and violent life, his charge whom he had trained and in whom he had invested so much of his being, look so honestly happy.

He reached out and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly. After a moment, he held her out at arms length and stared into her puzzled eyes. Her features glowed as he contemplated this remarkable young woman who was truly his daughter in all but name.

"Giles? What brought that on?"

"Buffy, in all the years I've been your Watcher, I've never said . . . 'Thank you.'"

"What for? _You're the one_ that's always saved our butts," Buffy asked. "You're my rock," she said softly, and Giles found the confused look on her face as refreshing as a soft spring rain.

"So what did I do to deserve this?"

"Just being you," Giles said slowly, looking down.

Buffy spoke again, but this time her voice conveyed a maturity that Giles had rarely heard prior to her return from the dead.

"But Giles," Buffy said slowly, "I'm just trying to tell you . . . _You know_ Jennie made a difference. To you. To all of us. You believe it. I believe it. With all my being I believe it. She's in all our hearts all the time. How could you even think . . ."

"Because no one realizes . . . ," Giles interrupted and Buffy felt a weight and despair in his words that she hadn't sensed since that horrific night of the fire in the old warehouse so many years before.

"To the rest of the world, she was just one more murder victim, and because no one knows and memories fade, I have to come here. Every year to remind myself. To keep her alive." Giles' voice quivered, "There are some things that we must do. You understand." In his words, Buffy felt the pain she realized must be tearing at his heart, clawing for a way to get out, yet held in with a control so great she couldn't conceive of the strength that comprised its source.

"So that she is not forgotten. It's so important because if she is . . ." Giles stopped in mid sentence and looked up, " . . . she will truly have died . . ."

"Giles, why would any of us forget her?" Buffy paused. "Or Tara, or Mom for that matter." 

And then suddenly Buffy saw what she had been blind to for so long. It was the wrinkles that now spread across Giles' face. They were so much more pronounced than when he had left for England. She saw the scattered strands of gray hair. She even imagined as she gazed at his hands that the knuckles were larger and more gnarled than she remembered. 

Buffy finally understood. For her and each of her friends, the weeks following Willow's restoration were now the new time, a second chance. Willow had found the goodness in herself and was able to let go of Tara. She had also discovered a new kind of love in her best friend, Xander. It was something she had never fully appreciated and yet had relished ever since she was a child when he used to drop salamanders down her shirt at family picnics just to hear her scream. She remembered, afterwards when no one was looking, how Xander would slip the little creatures back under the rocks where they came from so they wouldn't be hurt.

She recognized with that kind of love supporting her, she could go on, learn how to love again and find a new partner as she now knew Tara wanted her to do.

And Xander understood he was transformed. He alone had confronted the forces of Darkness, and just by who he was and what he felt, had defeated them. He realized now there was nothing for good he couldn't do. As Buffy pondered this, she almost imagined him scuffing his shoe in the dirt as he faced a world of endless possibilities.

And for Buffy herself, there was Dawn. Suddenly the burden, the need to protect her sister had vanished. Staring her in the face was her own flesh and blood, an actual physical part of her, asking to be taught, wanting to learn, wanting to help. Buffy now saw the power and the beauty that had always been in Dawn. She truly was The Key. And, in that image, Buffy also saw herself.

Then Buffy looked at Giles. He had crossed the same bridge with them all, indeed had led the way when all seemed doomed, but for him the new time was different. To the others it was a beginning, but Buffy sensed that to Giles, it was completion, like the setting sun.

"Giles," she whispered to him, "how could you ever think . . . that we would ever forget . . . _you_."

Giles didn't answer but only stared down at the worn floorboards under his feet. He felt ashamed that he had allowed Buffy to see him in this condition. 

"Giles?"

Giles turned his eyes back up to meet Buffy's. Self consciously he removed his gold rimmed glasses and rubbed the tips of his fingers across his eyelids.

"I'm sorry you had to hear all that," Giles said quietly as he readjusted his glasses on his face.

"Giles?"

"Yes?"

"Let's go," Buffy announced.

"Where are we going?" Giles asked as he suddenly realized that Buffy was taking complete control events.

"Back to the Magic Shop."

"But what for?"

Buffy turned to her Watcher, and this time Giles saw a totally new light in her eyes.

"There's something you and I have to do. I never knew it was important before . . . but I finally realize it is . . . and it's time."

* * * * *

Buffy slipped the iron key into the lock of the wooden cabinet behind the Magic Shop counter. The tumblers clicked loudly in their works. She grinned as she swung open the compartment door.

"How did you get a copy of that key?" Giles protested, and then his eyes fell on Anya who was smirking over in the corner by the Chinese herbs. "If I didn't know better," he continued wryly, "I'd say there was a breach of security."

Anya shook her head, waving her long blond hair that hung down close to her shoulders. "I haven't the faintest idea what your talking about," she announced with her nose in the air.

Buffy gripped the large half full bottle of single malt scotch and two small water glasses in her hands. With her arms full, she turned away from the now empty cabinet and gave the door a disrespectful kick with the bottom of her foot so that the door slapped shut. Turning towards the back storage room, she motioned with her head for Giles to follow.

Once inside with the door closed, she set the bottle and glasses down firmly on the small table between them and pulled up one of the room's folding chairs. Giles did the same. Buffy opened the bottle and poured a generous splash of scotch into each of the glasses.

"Buffy, what are you doing?" 

"This is the good stuff? Right?" Buffy asked, ignoring his question.

"Of course, but . . ."

"So," Buffy continued, "How do you drink it?"

"Well, you don't slug it down like some fizzy sugary soda," Giles said, slipping into his teaching mode. "You take a little sip, savor it, let the aromatic flavor slowly wash around your lips and . . ." Giles stopped.

"Buffy?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't plan on getting drunk, do you?"

"Only if you do," Buffy grinned back at Giles. 

"I don't understand," Giles complained. "What's this all about?"

Buffy stared at the contents of her glass as she gently swished the amber liquid around.

"It's about something that's finally time," she answered slowly. "It's about today . . . and tomorrow. Giles, you're the most important person in the world to me. You're why I am what I am. And until today that was enough."

Buffy ran her finger up and down the side of her glass.

"But tomorrow won't be the same. So much has changed since we got Willow back. All of us, we see each other more clearly now. Not differently because the stuff was always there, we just didn't pay attention to it. Willow and Xander, me and Dawn . . . and especially you and me."

Giles listened intently. For a moment, he thought to interrupt Buffy, to protest that her concerns were totally unfounded, but he realized these things were coming from her heart and he wouldn't interrupt that for anything.

"I never had a Dad, Giles . . . only you."

Giles felt his spirit soar.

"Someday, Giles . . . maybe someday . . . I'll have kids and . . ."

Giles' eyes widened. Buffy picked up on it immediately.

"Well it _is_ possible!" she protested.

"Did I say anything?" Giles replied with a wry smile.

"Okay, maybe someday _when Dawn_ has a family . . ."

Giles nodded.

"And when they ask about who our dad was, who raised us and taught us everything we know . . . I want to be able to tell them . . . about my rock . . . about you."

Giles stared blankly ahead, a wave of emotions overwhelming his thoughts.

Buffy pulled Willow's miniature digital voice recorder out of her pocket . Pressing the record button, she placed the device on the table next to the scotch bottle.

"You know all about me. Now it's your turn. Giles,tell me all about you. Who your mother and father were, what you remember about growing up. The first time you got drunk, your first girlfriend, all that kind of stuff."

Giles raised his eyebrows as he stared at the recorder.

"What?" Buffy responded, understanding her Watcher's surprise, "Oh, that. It's Willow's recording thingy. We gotta use it. What's that dumb Latin thing you say all the time?"

"Vox audita perit," Giles muttered to himself. "Littera scripta manet."

"That's it!" Buffy exclaimed.

"The spoken word passes away," Giles recited from memory. "That which is written down lives on."

Buffy nodded and raised her glass in a toast. 

"So all of us, . . . and those who come after . . . will never forget," she said softly. 

Giles followed her lead. Their two glasses clinked in unison. Giles took a good mouthful of the rich, powerful liquor. In imitation, Buffy did the same. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head as the single malt scotch burned its way down her throat.

For the first time in months, Giles broke out in full hearty laughter as Buffy's face turned bright red.

"How can you drink that . . . _shit!_" Buffy gagged.

Giles smiled again as he stared first at Buffy and then at Willow's digital voice recorder. 

"Ah, where to begin . . . where to begin," he mused.

* * * * *

  



End file.
